Massey study shows rapid loss of Spanish language among Mexican immigrants in the United States

Posted September 13, 2006; 05:35 p.m.

by Staff

A new study (available in PDF format) co-written by Douglas Massey,
the Henry G. Bryant Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs at the
Woodrow Wilson School, refutes claims that Latin American immigrants to
the United States are jeopardizing the country's English-speaking
identity.

The study, published this month in the Population and Development
Review, is co-written with Rubén Rumbaut and Frank Bean, both
sociologists at the University of California-Irvine.

Based on an analysis of language loss over the generations, the study
concludes that English has never been seriously threatened as the
dominant language in America, nor is it under threat today -- not even
in Southern California, home to the largest concentration of
Spanish-speaking immigrants.

The supposed threat to American culture and identity from large-scale
Hispanic immigration was argued most recently by Harvard professor
Samuel Huntington in his 2004 book "Who Are We?" He asserted that
because Latin American immigrants speak a common language, Spanish,
they are less interested in linguistic assimilation than earlier white
European immigrants. According to Huntington, Spanish may still be
retained in the second and even third generation of immigrant families.

Massey's study is based on newly available data from two surveys
investigating immigrant adaptation: the Immigration and
Intergenerational Mobility in Metropolitan Los Angeles survey, a 2004
telephone survey mainly targeting the Mexican-origin population but
also covering other Latin American and Asian communities; and the
Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study, which has followed the
progress of a large panel of youths of several dozen national origins
in San Diego and south Florida. Both surveys were funded by the Russell
Sage Foundation.

The surveys asked respondents to rate their level of fluency in their
native language and to identify the predominant language used at home.
Those who responded "not very well" and "English" respectively were
categorized as "linguistically dead" in terms of their native tongue.
The authors used these responses to derive "survival curves" of
linguistic retention among immigrants -- recording the fall-off in the
degree to which immigrants and their descendants are able to speak
their mother tongue and actually do so. These survival curves yield
language "life expectancies," or the average number of generations a
native language can be expected to survive in the U.S. after the
arrival of an immigrant.

The authors found that although the generational life expectancy of
Spanish is greater among Mexicans in Southern California than other
groups, its demise is all but assured by the third generation.
Third-generation immigrants are American-born with American-born
parents but with three or four foreign-born grandparents.

In the second generation, fluency in Spanish was greater for Mexican
immigrants than for other Latin American groups, and substantially
greater than the proportions of Asian immigrants who could speak their
mother tongue very well. In the third generation, only 17 percent of
Mexican immigrants still speak fluent Spanish, and in the fourth
generation, just 5 percent. The corresponding fourth-generation figure
for white European immigrants is 1 percent.

What is endangered, said the authors, is not the dominance of English
but the survival of the non-English languages immigrants bring with
them to the United States.

"To the extent that language fluency is an asset and that knowledge of
a foreign tongue represents a valuable resource in a global economy,
immigrants' efforts to maintain this part of their cultural heritage
and pass it on to their children should not be discouraged," the
authors said.